Informal and Web 2.0 Learning Survey Results

Some time ago, I participated in a survey of informal and web 2.0 learning by Jay Cross. As promised, Jay emailed me the results of this survey. The raw survey results are here, and graphs of the data are here.

Web 2.0 vs. Web 1.0

Via Grainne Conole.

A recent article in First Monday by Graham Cormode and Balachander Krishnamurthy on key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is a buzzword introduced in 2003–04 whWich is commonly used to encompass various novel phenomena on the World Wide Web. Although largely a marketing term, some of the key attributes associated with Web 2.0 include the growth of social networks, bi–directional communication, various ‘glue’ technologies, and significant diversity in content types. We are not aware of a technical comparison between Web 1.0 and 2.0. While most of Web 2.0 runs on the same substrate as 1.0, there are some key differences. We capture those differences and their implications for technical work in this paper. Our goal is to identify the primary differences leading to the properties of interest in 2.0 to be characterized. We identify novel challenges due to the different structures of Web 2.0 sites, richer methods of user interaction, new technologies, and fundamentally different philosophy. Although a significant amount of past work can be reapplied, some critical thinking is needed for the networking community to analyze the challenges of this new and rapidly evolving environment.

Social Networking Services in Education

Via Stephen Downes.

Digizen just published the results of a project exploring the potential use of social networking services in education.

The project is designed to investigate how social networking services can and are being used to support personalised formal and informal learning by young people in schools and colleges.

The complete report can be downloaded here (.pdf).

oAuth Explained

In this post, Thejesh explains oAuth and gives a simple example on how to use it from a consumer point of view. Thejesh writes:

oAuth is an open protocol to allow secure API authentication in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications. oAuth is not not a new concept. It is similar to your Google AuthSub, AOL OpenAuth, Yahoo BBAuth, Upcoming API, Flickr API, Amazon Web Services API but more open and not proprietary.

How is it more safe? You have a guest at home. You feel good to have a guest at home and you want him to enjoy his stay. Since your and your guests timings are not matching you like to give him key of your home. So he can manage when you are not around. But this key is a special key and not your regular (master key) key. With this key your guest can enter your home and kitchen but not your bedroom. oAuth works on similar principles.

Digg Recommendation Engine

Digg released a recommendation engine in beta beginning this week as they write "to discover new content on Digg". More information about this new feature is available in the video below and in this Whitepaper.


Digg Recommendation Engine from Kevin Rose on Vimeo.